Philip Aldrick Economics Editor The Times 23 April 2020

Britain’s key workers earn 8 per cent less on average than other employees, according to research.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that members of the group were similar to the rest of the workforce in age and education but more likely to be lower-paid and female.

Key workers include doctors, nurses, carers, social workers, teachers, prison officers, binmen and those in the food industry, and cover 7.1 million people, or almost a fifth of UK jobs. The government has asked them to continue working to keep essential services going.

The IFS analysis shows that in 2010 their wages were 5 per cent lower than those of similar non-key workers. The think tank said that last year the wage gap was “around 9 per cent after taking differences in their characteristics into account”.

The group earns an average of £12.26 an hour, 8 per cent less than the £13.26 an hour average of other workers. A third of key workers earn £10 an hour or less, below the long-term target for the national living wage, the IFS said.

Donald Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis has left the US looking like a third-world country and on course for a second Great Depression, one of the world’s leading economists has warned.

Larry Elliott Economics editor the Guardian 23 April 2020

In a withering attack on the president, Joseph Stiglitz said millions of people were turning to food banks, continuing to go to work due to a lack of sick pay, and dying because of health inequalities.

The Nobel prize-winning economist said: “The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply. It is like a third-world country. The public social safety net is not working.”

Stiglitz, along-term critic of Trump, said 14% of the US population was dependent on food stamps and predicted that the social infrastructure could not cope with an unemployment rate that could reach 30% in the coming months.

“We have a safety net that is inadequate,” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “The inequality in the US is so large. This disease has targeted those with the poorest health.

“In the advanced world, the US is one of the countries with the poorest health overall and the greatest health inequality,” he said.

Republicans had opposed proposals to give those affected by coronavirus 10 days’ sick leave, Stiglitz said, meaning that many employees were going to work even while infected. “The Republicans said no because they said it would set a bad precedent. It is literally unbelievable.”

He added: “The safety net is not adequate and is propagating the disease. There is very weak unemployment insurance and people don’t think they can rely on it?’

During an interview to mark the paperback publication of his book People, Power, and Profits, Stiglitz was asked whether the US might be heading for a second Great Depression.

“Yes, is the answer in short,” he said. “If you leave it to Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell [the Republican Senate majority leader], we will have a Great Depression. If we had the right policy structure in place we could avoid it easily?’

Stiglitz said that as a result of Trump’s mismanagement, the White House office responsible for pandemics had been closed, funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been cut, and the US had gone into the crisis without enough testing kits, masks and protective gear. Encouraged by Trump, some parts of the US were determined to reopen in a way that would facilitate the transmission of the disease and lead to a fresh outbreak, he added.

“In those circumstances it won’t be the government enforcing the lock-down, it will be fear. The concern is that people are not going to be spending on anything other than food and that’s the definition of a Great Depression,” he said.

“We were unprepared but, even given the degree of unpreparedness, Trump’s decision to make this about politics rather than about science has meant we have responded far more poorly.”

Stiglitz said that if Trump were defeated in the presidential contest in November and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress there was a chance of the US moving in a more progressive direction, but he warned that Republicans would fight dirty to cling on to power.

“There is voter suppression and gerrymandering. The Republican party knows it’s a minority party and there is a no-holds-barred struggle going on to make sure a minority party rules America.”

Stiglitz said the current crisis would force countries to make themselves less vulnerable, and this would lead to shorter supply chains and a greater emphasis on self-sufficiency in food and energy.

He added that the complexity of modern production methods meant self-sufficiency was not feasible but added: “Fighting global pandemics and climate change require global, cooperation. It’s just that the president doesn’t understand that.

“I hope we emerge from this with the perspective that multilateral-ism is even more important than we thought. It can’t just be a corporate-driven globalisation. We have to make it more resilient?‘

“The management and the distribution of the PPE stockpile has been outsourced to a private company, Movianto, which was sold two weeks ago for $133m (£107m) by its owner, a large US healthcare group.”

“The fact that Movianto was being sold in the midst of a global pandemic, months after being instructed by the UK government to start mobilising the PPE supply, would be remarkable enough. But the sale is only the latest development in a turbulent 18 months for Movianto, which has included legal disputes with a property developer who built the enormous warehouse in Merseyside.”

Privatisation – unintended consequences or just consequences? Unbelievable – Owl’s advice to government: keep your eye on the ball!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/revealed-private-firm-running-uk-ppe-stockpile-was-sold-in-middle-of-pandemic

The warehouse appears unremarkable, except for its size. Just off a motorway on an industrial estate in Merseyside sits a 35,000 sq m (377,000 sq ft) purpose-built warehouse with 20 loading docks to enable the storage and rapid distribution of hundreds of millions of face masks, aprons, gowns, gloves and body bags.

For security reasons, the Guardian has been asked not to disclose the precise location of the UK’s stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) for use in a pandemic. It is being stored on a site where builders moved the equivalent of more than 90 Olympic–size swimming pools of earth to make way for a vast, climate-controlled warehouse.

However, the Guardian can reveal that the management and the distribution of the stockpile has been outsourced to a private company, Movianto, which was sold two weeks ago for $133m (£107m) by its owner, a large US healthcare group.

The fact that Movianto was being sold in the midst of a global pandemic, months after being instructed by the UK government to start mobilising the PPE supply, would be remarkable enough.

But the sale is only the latest development in a turbulent 18 months for Movianto, which has included legal disputes with a property developer who built the enormous warehouse in Merseyside.
The disputes culminated in Movianto securing a high court injunction in March last year, to thwart threats by the developer, Oliver Morley, to “lock the gates” and prevent Movianto employees from accessing the warehoused stock.

Morley’s company has since gone into administration and its legal claims against Movianto have been discontinued, but Morley maintains his legal battles with Movianto were not over. He called for an investigation into the firm, alleging there was “a much bigger story that needs to be told” about his former tenant, but declined to provide specific details.

For its part, Movianto firmly dismisses all of Morley’s allegations, pointing out that his property firm was defeated last year in court. The company insists the legal disputes and the sale have had no impact on its storage or distribution of PPE in recent months.

“Movianto firmly believes that it has and continues to perform to all contractual obligations,” the firm said.

But the saga is likely to put a spotlight on the UK government’s decision to outsource the management of the emergency stockpile. In three years, the stockpile appears to have been stored in three different warehouses. Meanwhile, management of the stock has been passed from a German–owned multinational to an American one.

In the coming months the custody of the UK’s emergency stockpile of PPE will be passed on to a family-run business based in suburban Paris.

A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson said: “The pandemic influenza stockpile held under this contract has remained safely and securely stored at all times and has supported our Covid-19 response through the distribution of vital personal protective equipment and essential supplies to the NHS and social care sector.”

PPE provision

Widespread shortages of PPE have dominated complaints over the government’s handling of the pandemic in recent weeks, including from NHS workers who say their lives are being endangered by the lack of adequate protection. This week an RAF plane was dispatched to Turkey to secure more supplies.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, insists the government is rising to the challenge, and has repeatedly said the PPE challenge has been “one of distribution rather than one of supply”. In addition to procuring new supplies from China, the DHSC has been drawing on the emergency stockpile, which it has stored since 2006 under its pandemic influenza preparedness programme.

That stockpile is made up of around 52,000 pallets of equipment worth an estimated £500m. While it contains antiviral medicines and flu vaccines which are of limited use against Covid-19, the bulk of stocks are said to be PPE and hygiene products. Much of the stock needs to be frequently monitored, updated and stored in temperature–controlled conditions.

The government owns the stock, but outsources its management to private firms. Previously, the contract was held by DHL. Movianto, a subsidiary of the US health company Owens & Minor, won the £55m deal in the summer of 2018.

As part of Movianto’s plans, the company entered into business with Morley to build the vast warehouse in Merseyside. In the meantime, the pandemic stockpile was to be temporarily housed in another warehouse, also owned by Morley, in Knowsley.

Movianto’s plans were approved by the Cabinet Office, documents suggest. The company says its decision to enter into business with Morley was “made by executives no longer associated with Movianto”.

A notice for the new NHS contract stipulated that the contractor would be required to maintain “a ready state for deployment in the event of a pandemic event”.

In early 2019, Movianto became mired in disputes with Morley’s company, which accused the firm of not paying rent for the warehouse in Knowsley. According to Morley, his tenants became “uncooperative”. “This went on for weeks,” he said. Movianto strongly rejects the allegation, saying it paid rent “in accordance with the terms of the lease”.

Another grievance related to the payment of electricity bills to power the generators to ensure the stock, including medicines, was stored at the right temperature. Morley claims he ended up having to pay for electricity to power the generators, which “kept going on the blink” resulting, he alleges, in “temperature spikes”.

A Movianto source said Morley’s account was inaccurate. In a statement, Movianto said electricity generators were only needed because of “Morley’s own failure to provide a mains supply in accordance with his contractual obligations”.

By his own account, Morley’s financial disputes with Movianto culminated in him threatening the firm. “It got to the point where I said I’m just going to lock the gates and refuse you entry to the site.” When that happened, Movianto rushed to the high court in March 2019 and successfully obtained an injunction to ensure continued access to the warehouse.

Movianto said the injunction was required as “a result of Morley’s conduct and repeated threats to interfere with Movianto’s operations”. It said Morley’s allegations over rent and generators were undermined by “various court proceedings” that ruled in Movianto’s favour. In July 2019, under the control of administrators, Morley’s property company Industrial North West LLP discontinued its legal claims against Movianto.

More challenges ahead

Morley insists he will continue to seek legal action against Movianto – and he is used to high-profile disputes. In January, he lost a prominent lawsuit against RBS in which he claimed the bank’s controversial restructuring group placed him under duress by seizing his assets after struggling to repay a £75m loan. A high court judge noted Morley used the “borrowed personal wealth” to spend on “South African mining investments, property, cars, a yacht and a jet”.

Morley told the Guardian his lifestyle was the result of hard work and “had nothing to do with being a good landlord”. He insists previous business disputes are irrelevant to his grievances against Movianto, which came to a head in May 2019.

As works were completed at the Merseyside warehouse and Movianto prepared to transfer the stockpile from Knowsley, Industrial North West was forced into administration. Documents state the firm “failed to comply” with the conditions of a £61m loan facility.

Morley lost control of his warehouses and administrators stepped in. According to the administrator’s report, the legal dispute “caused delays to the construction works” at the new warehouse, which were finally completed in July 2019. Movianto said the legal disputes “have had no impact on Movianto’s work in response to Covid-19”.
According to a government source, the transfer of the UK’s emergency PPE supplies to the new warehouse was completed by the end of August 2019, four months before the first cases of Covid-19 emerged in China.

The warehouse is now owned by Warrington council, which bought the property for £45m in October. During a change of shifts on Tuesday afternoon, warehouse workers were seen having their car boots searched as they left.

In the coming months, their employer will switch from Owens & Minor to the French company EHDH Holding Group, under a deal agreed on 6 April. The sale is expected to be completed before the end of June, with demand for supplies in the UK’s pandemic stockpile expected to continue for many months.

The distribution of that stockpile’s PPE, it seems, may no longer solely be the responsibility of Movianto. Eleven days ago, the DHSC announced a new “24/7 military operation” to oversee the supply of PPE to health and care workers. “We’ve had to create a whole new logistics network, essentially from scratch,” Hancock said.

A government source said the coronavirus outbreak presented different requirements to a flu pandemic – the basis of Movianto’s original contract. Movianto was now “supporting” the government’s PPE plan through its contractual obligations, the source said. Movianto said the terms of its NHS contracts were “confidential”.

Jeff Jochims, the chief operating officer of Owens & Minor, said: “We look forward to closing the sale of Movianto business to EHDH, but in the meantime will continue our ceaseless work to support the global response to this pandemic.”

In a sign of deepening tensions between the Department of Health and Downing Street, the source said that Hancock’s Cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick was “strongly advised” not to mention the consignment at the government’s coronavirus media briefing last Saturday.

Hancock’s department ‘warned No 10’ not to publicise PPE shipment

Downing Street ignored a firm warning from Matt Hancock’s Department of Health that ministers should not publicise the expected shipment of protective kit for NHS staff from Turkey in case it backfired, a senior departmental source has told the Guardian.

In a sign of deepening tensions between the Department of Health and Downing Street, the source said that Hancock’s Cabinet colleague Robert Jenrick was “strongly advised” not to mention the consignment at the government’s coronavirus media briefing last Saturday.

Instead, the housing, communities and local government secretary – with No 10’s approval – went ahead and promised that it would arrive the next day and contain 83 tonnes of personal protective equipment (PPE), including 400,000 of the full-length surgical gowns that are in critically short supply in the NHS. Its non-arrival on Sunday led hospital bosses to go public for the first time with their “intense frustration and exasperation” with ministers over botched deliveries of PPE.

The disclosures – strongly denied by a source close to Hancock who called them “categorically not true and a fabrication” – come amid what appear to be growing difficulties at the heart of government over who is to blame for the difficulties Boris Johnson’s administration is facing over its handling of the Coronavirus crisis, especially the lack of both testing and PPE for NHS staff.
Hancock was subject to a public attack in a front-page story in Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph, quoting government insiders, over his struggle to deliver the 100,000 tests for Coronavirus a day by the end of the month that he promised in early April.

An unnamed person referred to as an insider who is close to Downing Street aides was quoted as calling the target “arbitrary”, and adding: “There is a faint irrationality behind it, just because there was a clamour for mass testing. Hancock’s 100,000 target was a response to a criticism in the media and he decided to crank out tests regardless.

“He’s not had a good crisis. The prime minister will say he has confidence in him but it doesn’t feel like that. He set out to buy time by setting this target and it threatens to come back to bite him. The 100,000 figure was Hancock’s idea, but he made that figure up.”

On Wednesday, the DHSC source said that Downing Street had been urged not to refer to the cargo before Saturday’s briefing. “We strongly advised Robert Jenrick against doing this [mentioning the Turkey shipment at the government press conference last Saturday] but he and No 10 overruled us,” the source said.

“The advice we gave as a department was that we shouldn’t mention individual orders of PPE. But for whatever reason it wasn’t followed.”

But another cabinet source said it was not right to say “it was just Matt that was warning about this”.

“Lots of people were clear that we shouldn’t be talking about any shipments before they’ve arrived. Everyone in government is normally wary of this and I don’t know why it didn’t happen this time,” he said.

The government has faced severe criticism this week over its handling of deliveries of foreign-sourced PPE to the UK. The promised arrival of 400,000 gowns urgently needed by frontline staff turning into a saga which dragged on into Wednesday, when one of three RAF planes that had been scheduled to bring the shipment back finally touched down in the UK.

The plane had been dispatched from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where two other aircraft have been on standby to pick up further supplies from Turkey since late on 20 April.

The Department of Health and Social Care was blamed for failing to secure the necessary export approvals from Turkey after placing the order, but health sources said on 22 April that there were other reasons for the delay.

The planes remain on standby at RAF Brize Norton and may fly to Istanbul imminently if there is enough equipment waiting to make the journey worthwhile. “We’ve been told there is another delivery at the airport now, but we are not yet sure if there’s enough to justify a flight,” a defence source said.

There have been repeated ministerial assurances that the cargo would imminently arrive in the UK since Saturday when Jenrick first referred to it. His initial announcement was made even though necessary clearances had not been sought.

On Sunday, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, said he hoped the shipment would arrive the next day. That promise was tentatively repeated by Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, on Monday morning after NHS leaders intervened. “I don’t want to start making more and more promises, but I understand that flight will take off this afternoon and those [gowns] will be delivered,” Dowden said.

On Tuesday, the government finally adopted a more cautious tone. Simon Clarke, the local government minister, said the consignment would be in the UK “in the next few days”.
The Whitehall source said: “We have been telling people off across government against doing this [talking about expected deliveries before they arrive]. We just need to stop talking about them until they arrive in the country. It’s just not helpful for the government for us to be talking about it.

“The advice that we gave as a department was that we shouldn’t mention individual orders of PPE [because] supply chains are extremely unreliable. When orders fall through or are delayed, for whatever reason, it’s not good for anyone. Nobody in the NHS appreciates being told that we have got X tonnes of PPE turning up but it then not arriving.”

The source added that Hancock has made clear to No 10 and other government departments that: “We shouldn’t be making promises that can’t be delivered on an exact date when we don’t know what will arrive or when. We’re just trying to exercise caution in the way we talk about supplies.”

In the wake of last Sunday’s non-arrival from Turkey, NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation, which both represent hospital trusts in England, made clear that they wanted ministers to stop talking about PPE orders until they actually arrived and had been checked to ensure that they contain what had been ordered.

There are few ways out of the lockdown that do not contain significant risks. Testing, contact tracing and accurate data will be essential to any exit strategy.

Owl agrees but wonder on past form whether the Government is reluctant to organise the effort. Indeed this Times Editorial goes further and asks whether this Government is capable of organising the effort.

Owl is unimpressed by the way the immediate increase in testing has been organised in central locations with the expectation that Care Home staff, for example, should drive many miles, in some reported cases for hours, to the nearest test centre. Then the Government expresses surprise that these testing centres are not fully used.

To Owl this looks like a “London centric” approach. Well – hello London – the rest of the country is different, especially with regard to connectivity by public transport (assuming it is running).

http://www.thetimes.co.uk

In the film Contagion a scientist impusively injects herself with an untested vaccine. It works, is rapidly distributed globally and the people of Earth are saved from a lethal pandemic. No such fantasy solution awaits in the real world of today’s coronavirus. Although it is good news that human trials are beginning in Britain, the road to a vaccine is long and by no means assured. Extensive testing must be followed by manufacture and then distribution on a vast scale. That will take many months. A second hope, that large numbers may already have had the virus and acquired immunity, appears to be fading too. On Monday the World Health Organisation suggested that only 2-3 per cent of the global population have been infected. And while several existing drugs are being tried on very ill patients, none so far offers a panacea.

Yet there is a limit to how long the hard lockdown can be maintained. Its alarming cost is becoming clearer. Jobs and livelihoods have been lost, public debt has risen precipitously, and the longer the crisis continues, the greater the toll on the public’s physical and mental health. The International Monetary Fund has predicted a 3 per cent contraction in the global economy in 2020. That is not its worst-case scenario. The longer the pause, the deeper the economic scars.

That suggests Britain must find a way to live with the virus. The best that lockdowns can do is to suppress it to a level at which the restrictions can be safely lifted. The government must decide what that level is and how the rate of infection can subsequently be contained. A second wave that overwhelms the health system and necessitates further lockdowns would be disastrous. Not only would it cost more lives but it would risk destroying public confidence in future attempts to lift restrictions, thereby deepening the economic damage.

One possible way out of a lockdown is to suppress the epidemic to a point at which it is possible to introduce the kind of test, trace and isolate strategies being deployed in countries such as China, Singapore and South Korea. This is an established method of containing disease. But this approach is not straightforward either. It would require the rate of new infections to be suppressed to very low levels, given that everyone who had come into contact with someone who had tested positive would need to be traced and tested. It would also require a massive expansion of testing capacity, something the government has struggled with.

Another challenge would be to assemble a task force capable of rapidly identifying and then getting in touch with all those who had come into contact with the recently infected. Smartphone apps may provide clues but they are only a partial solution. Much of the work will need to be done by human beings. The overwhelming response to the NHS’s call for volunteers suggests no shortage of willing hands. The question is whether the goverment is capable of organising them. A better option may be to delegate the task to local authorities. Professor Allyson Pollock, a consultant in public health medicine, believes they could set up a national task force within a week.

Of course the alternative way out is to return to some variant of the government’s original herd immunity strategy, easing restrictions for those of working age while continuing to isolate the elderly and vulnerable who are most likely to need critical care. But distinguishing between different segments of the population raises difficult ethical issues. Besides, such a strategy would work only if younger people were convinced that the risk to their health was sufficiently low. That would require better data on morbidity rates than is currently available as well as research on how long immunity may last. Until such information becomes clearer, lifting the lockdown is perilous.

On one level, the argument about what Sir Simon McDonald said to the foreign affairs select committee this week can be dismissed as a storm in a Whitehall teacup. Hours after the head of the foreign office had called Britain’s refusal to join the European Union’s procurement efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic a “political decision”, McDonald retracted his words. Whitehall-watchers are fascinated. The wider world has bigger things to worry about.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist http://www.theguardian.com

But on another level, this week’s row is political dynamite – and for two main reasons.

First, and more immediately, the McDonald affair is another challenge, this time from the Whitehall high command itself, to the government’s increasingly desperate attempts to show that ministers have successfully gripped the effort to secure life-saving medical equipment and protective kit for the fight against the virus. At its most serious, it comes down to an admission that ministers who previously said that the UK did not take part in the ventilator procurement programme because of “communication” errors were actually in a position, early on in the pandemic, to save more lives by joining the scheme, and yet deliberately chose not to.

Second, Tuesday’s furore shoots a beam of light into the dark and tangled argument at the heart of British politics about the longer term strategy and objectives of Boris Johnson’s government. It is a reminder that, in this government, power still rests with those who believe the overriding objective of this administration, even now, is a hard Brexit. It implies that in Johnson’s government the fight against Covid-19 is, of course, massively important – but only up to a point.

McDonald’s session with the foreign affairs committee was not, at the outset, about participation in the EU procurement programme at all. Most of the first hour was about efforts to repatriate UK nationals from around the globe. But when, later on, the committee chair, Tom Tugendhat, asked whether Britain’s failure to take part in the EU programme was a political decision, the head of the foreign office confirmed that it was.

The hasty retraction letter on Tuesday evening was extraordinary. If nothing else, it confirms the incredible sensitivities in government at the moment about its handling of the pandemic. The letter also needs to be read carefully. The key sentence nevertheless appears to be this one: “Ministers were not briefed by our mission in Brussels about the scheme and a political decision was not taken on whether or not to participate.”

The more you read the letter, the more questions it raises. The key point is that, in early February, while the UK’s Brussels mission did not brief ministers – the denial in the letter – about the EU scheme, the Brussels mission clearly did brief departmental civil servants. In practice, that means that Brussels briefed the Foreign Office and the Department of Health and Social Care about the ventilator procurement scheme, presumably at a senior level, in detail and as an issue requiring priority attention. Those civil servants will then have briefed their ministers, including the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and the health secretary, Matt Hancock. So ministers were indeed briefed, only not by “our mission in Brussels”. In other words, the ministers knew about the scheme and knew they could take part in it.

What exactly happened next depends in part on what is meant by a “political decision”. That phrase has now been denied. But it is hard to take the retraction too seriously, other than as a means of removing ministerial fingerprints. It can mean what many people would assume, that the decision was political rather than practical or commercial. But in civil service-speak, a political decision can also mean a decision taken by ministers, who are political, rather than officials or expert specialists, who advise them about it.

In this context, that would most probably mean the decision, even in the shape of a “non-decision” to let the issue lie on the table, was taken by or on behalf of Boris Johnson in No 10, but it would be essentially political in both senses. That seems to fit with other evidence suggesting that the question was indeed discussed at Cobra meetings, which always report to the prime minister. It would also be valuable to clarify how and in what terms that initial decision in London was then communicated in a response to the EU in Brussels. If London chose to write itself out of the EU process in February, that may help explain why the UK claims not to have been informed about other joint schemes later.

Even without the full details, there is no way of reading these events as anything except another, and early, example of the government’s failure to take Covid-19 seriously enough soon enough. More than two months later, in Raab’s words in the Commons today, it is now the government’s official policy to take “the right measures at the right time, guided by the science and the medical experts”. But this was not true in February, when the science and the experts were ignored at Cobra. Instead, the decision not to join the EU efforts has contributed to the shortages and failings on which Keir Starmer began his parliamentary career as Labour leader today.

But the importance of the decision goes further, and in a direction that Starmer chose not to follow, perhaps wisely on his debut. The political decision not to join the EU procurement process reflected what was uppermost in Johnson’s and other minds in February. Britain, as McDonald stressed this week, had left the EU on 31 January. The Brexiters had done what they promised at the election. The national ship was being set on a course that turned its back on Europe. They weren’t interested in new post-Brexit links with EU schemes any more than they were interested in establishing such links during the transition period.

Any suggestion, at this of all moments, that the UK should opt into an EU scheme on anything will have been dismissed with contempt. It was in every way a political decision. A month or so later, things – including politics – were different. When Hancock was offered a renewed chance to join another EU-wide scheme, the offer was taken up. But by then Covid-19 was a far larger reality, the UK was facing lockdown, and ministers were playing catch-up, just as they still are today.

McDonald’s retraction on Tuesday shows that, even in the face of Covid-19, not as much has changed as some might assume. The retraction is not just a partisan correction of the record. It is a statement that the Johnson government will maintain its ideological opposition to anything except a hard Brexit. Those who say, as David Lidington did this week, that a Brexit extension is now inevitable because of Covid-19, may be deceiving themselves.

In this government, especially as it struggles to control the coronavirus outbreak in the face of shortages and deaths, the pandemic remains an all-consuming but still essentially temporary concern. Johnson’s essential project is not to save and rebuild the nation. It is Brexit. Always was. Still is.

The UK has underinvested in healthcare “over many years” which has hampered its ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the boss of Roche, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52387605

Severin Schwan, Roche chief executive, told BBC Newsnight: “the real issue here is that the UK has probably not invested enough into healthcare, both in absolute terms and in relative terms over many years. That was a problem to start with, but it really shows up in such a crisis when the system is more stressed.”

The company is a key partner of the government and Public Health England in ramping up testing for coronavirus.

Mr Schwan said: “the cooperation and the partnership with the government is excellent, but you can’t fix the infrastructure in a couple of weeks. I mean, if there is too little investment over many years into the health care system, then it’s simply not possible to ramp up as fast as you would wish in such a challenging situation.”

Roche now has 13 UK sites operating to run high-throughput swab testing for coronavirus, under its partnership with the government.

But Mr Schwan added that, in terms of these high-throughput systems, the UK still had “about half the capacity” of other European countries, like Germany and Switzerland, relative to population.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “The government is committing record investment to the NHS, including the Long-Term NHS funding settlement, which has been enshrined in law. We have created a whole national testing programme from scratch.

“Simultaneously, we have increased the capacity of our laboratories and established a partnership with Roche diagnostics, which has already provided thousands of additional tests.”

At last something sensible from Public Health England – Owl

An army of thousands of coronavirus contact tracers is to be trained within weeks to help Britain to exit lockdown.

Council staff and civil servants are among those who will be drafted in as part of a three-tier system to ensure that every infected person is isolated before they pass the virus on to others.

JESSICA TAYLOR http://www.thetimes.co.uk

Public Health England aims to have a system running within three weeks so that it can be used if the government wants to ease restrictions.

As he declared yesterday that Britain had “reached the peak” of coronavirus cases, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, promised “very large scale” contact tracing would be in place to allow social distancing to be relaxed.

Asian countries such as South Korea and Singapore have kept outbreaks under control and minimised deaths through intensive tracing of the movements of those shown to be infected, with those who have come into close contact ordered to self-isolate.

Britain abandoned mass contact tracing a month ago as testing capacity failed to keep up with the epidemic.

The aim would be to track more than 80 per cent of people with whom an infected person had been in contact within 24 hours of diagnosis. Infected people and those they had contact with would be quarantined until the risk that they could get the illness had passed.

The plan emerged as:

• The chief medical officer warned that some social distancing would last the rest of the year and the World Health Organisation said that “the virus will be with us for a long time”.
• A national “antibody census” will test 300,000 people over the next year to build up a picture of how the virus has spread through Britain.
• The NHS will “reopen” for routine care now that it has spare beds, amid warnings that 60,000 cancer patients could die.
• Hospitals have been admonished for stockpiling supplies as it was revealed that the NHS needs up to 60 million masks a week for frontline workers.
• Parliament hosted the first partly virtual prime minister’s questions in a sitting largely free of technical glitches.

Mr Hancock told MPs: “As we bring the number of new cases down so we will introduce contact tracing at large scale . . . Our goal is to get to a point where we can test, track and trace everybody who needs it.”

Officials are confident that Britain will have the capacity to test 100,000 people a day by the end of next week and believe this will be enough to introduce a national contact tracing scheme, pointing out that South Korea operates one on 20,000 tests a day.

They acknowledge that it will require a huge workforce and that setting one up is crucial. A Cabinet Office official said that the plan was to have the scheme running before May 7, when ministers must review the lockdown. “We cannot announce any easing of the lockdown until we know that testing and contact tracing is working effectively,” they said.

“This is why we need to have the capacity for 100,000 tests by the end of the month because even if we are not using them now we will need them at that point.”

The WHO said that countries wanting to exit lockdown must “find every case” and “trace and quarantine every contact”. Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, pressed Mr Hancock to commit the government to having a scheme in place within two weeks. Mr Hancock replied: “We are ramping up our testing capacity and our capacity for contact tracing in a matter of weeks, and we’ll have it ready to make sure that we can use that as and when the incidence of transmission comes down.”

The NHS is developing a smartphone app that logs contact through Bluetooth. However, Allyson Pollock, a professor at Newcastle University, insisted that “we don’t need fancy expensive apps”, telling the BBC that even San Francisco was deploying a “low-tech model using people and telephones”. She estimated that training courses for volunteers, teachers or students could be done in a few days.

The Times understands that the government’s contact tracing plan envisages three levels of tracing. As well as the app, a second tier of temporary contact tracers is also planned, with officials finalising the numbers needed. Estimates have centred on about 15,000.

Public officials whose normal duties have been suspended are likely to be given basic training. Council environmental health officers are likely to be among those used. Volunteers who have come forward to help the NHS are also being considered.

A top tier made up of Public Health England’s most experienced staff will be reserved for tracing outbreaks in hospitals, care homes and other settings where lives are at immediate risk.